1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle front structure.
2. Background Art
Heretofore, there have been known various vehicle front structures intended for the protection of pedestrians. As an example, JP 2006-001358A (‘Patent Publication 1’) discloses a vehicle front structure comprising a plate member which extends from a lower shroud member to a position adjacent to a bottom surface of a bumper fascia so as to flick legs of a pedestrian during a frontal impact with the pedestrian. In this type of vehicle front structure, there has also been proposed an improved structure intended to provide enhanced absorbing capacity of impact energy during a frontal collision. For example, JP 2005-271810A (‘Patent Publication 2’) discloses a vehicle front structure comprising a beam member which bridges between right and left crush cans fixed to a front end of a subframe.
In the structure disclosed in Patent Publication 1, although the intended purpose of pedestrian protection can be effectively achieved by means of flicking legs of a pedestrian during a frontal impact with the pedestrian, it is difficult to ensure sufficient impact energy-absorbing capacity. In the structure disclosed in Patent Publication 2, although a certain level of impact energy-absorbing capacity can be ensured, it is still not enough to meet rising demand. Thus, there is a need for developing a technique of achieving the protection of pedestrians by means of enhancing impact energy-absorbing capacity.
In addition, a vehicle front structure is required to suppress serious influence from a light bump or a low-impact collision on a vehicle body, so as to achieve enhanced repairability which allows a damage by the low-impact collision to be repaired simply by replacing only a repair part (i.e., a part to be originally detachably attached to the vehicle body) without replacement of a vehicle-body component.